Amitabh Kant stressed that the country must urbanise in a scientific, sustainable manner, enhance agriculture productivity, and remain a services nation…reports Sukant Deepak
India’s G20 Sherpa and former NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant contends that in order for India to grow at high rates of nine to ten per cent and become a developed economy by 2047, the country’s GDP has to grow by nine times and per capita income by eight times, with manufacturing and urbanisation playing a key role in the process.
He also hailed India’s chairmanship of the G20 and batted for lateral entry into the government service.
“Our manufacturing has to grow by 16 times. It has to fire on all cylinders. We have to become a manufacturing nation,” Kant told IANS at the Kasauli Literary Festival.
He also stressed that the country must urbanise in a scientific, sustainable manner, enhance agriculture productivity, and remain a services nation.
“For all this to happen, you have to provide well-paid jobs to the people and every transition that takes place to manufacturing means that people must move from agriculture to manufacturing and towards urbanisation. The dependence of population in India on agriculture is 46.5 per cent,” Kant added.
He pointed out that agriculture gives us 16.5 per cent of the GDP, adding that nowhere in the world does this happen.
“Therefore, you need to take the population away from agriculture and put them into manufacturing on better-paid quality jobs. There also needs to be stress on disinvestment, cutting red tape, and ease of doing business which has been this government’s agenda,” he emphasised.
About the time when India held the presidency of G20 from December 1, 2022, to November 30, 2023, Kant recollects that the country was able to bring consensus on all key issues confronting the world.
Some of the key issues were a specific action plan for sustainable development goals which had been impacted due to Covid, the issue of strong, sustainable, balanced growth in the global economy, the issue of Green Development Pact, technological transformation and the use of digital public infrastructure and more importantly, the issue of women-led development.
“These were all critical issues. But to my mind, our biggest achievement during G20 was the fact that it spoke the voice of the Global South, and under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi, was able to make the African Union an integral member of G20. So, in a way, we succeeded in making it from G20 to G21 which has made G20 a far more inclusive body in the world. Now, it covers almost 90 per cent of the global population and covers a very vast, almost 80 per cent of the global GDP. So, this has been India’s biggest achievement,” Kant said.
Stressing that it was the Prime Minister’s wish to hold G20 meetings in most states and UTs, and not just at one or two places, the former bureaucrat said: “We took it to every nook and corner of the country. And every state was an active participant. This required clockwork precision. It was a very federal G20. Every state brought their one district and a product forward.”
Adding that the country has succeeded hugely when it comes to ease of doing business, Kant claims what India has achieved in last eight years what it could not achieve in the last 60 years.
“We have scrapped over 1,600 laws. And moved up 79 positions in the World Bank ease of doing business. India has now become an easy and simple nation,” he said.
Kant feels that the next lot of reforms have to happen by the states which have to make procedures simple.
“This is very critical. India has done a lot of work in terms of insolvency, bankruptcy code, real estate regulation act, and goods and services tax. We have opened up, reduced the corporate tax, and opened up the economy for the private sector in a much bigger way while the FDI has also grown,” he said.
Asked why small traders are not very happy with the introduction of GST, Kant said that there will be some unhappy people when you bring in major reforms of paperless digital tax, as you are cutting out human intervention completely.
“GST rates in some areas are high but that is an issue where states and Central government have to sit down and sort out,” he added.
About India’s focus right now, the former NITI Aayog CEO said first and foremost, the country needs to drive manufacturing in a big way and increase exports in order to become an exporting nation.
“We must urbanise and must improve learning and health outcomes and nutritional standards which is very important. The social indicators to improve are very critical. Health, education, nutrition, all these are very critical over a long period of time,” he said.
Considering that NITI Ayog during his reign had several lateral entries, India’s G20 Sherpa said that he has always been in favour of lateral entrants considering they bring in a lot of fresh thinking.
“We should continue to find ways of, introducing new talents into government to constantly push for innovation and transformation within government,” he said.
Stressing that there was no disconnect between major schemes and their implementation on the ground, Kant cited a few examples.
“We have made 40 million houses and provided pipe water connection to 253 million Indians. Around 130 million toilets and 88,000 kilometres of road have been made. Now this is the kind of infrastructure which no other country has been able to make in seven years. What disconnection are you talking about?”
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